COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Talk of merging communities in Northeast Ohio has increased as a growing number of cities and villages share services to save money.

But that talk has yet to result in a merger or annexation, and even proponents of regional cooperation acknowledge the many obstacles, including conflicting labor agreements, different tax rates and fears about losing services or political influence.

"That becomes such a difficult ... puzzle," said Ohio Auditor Dave Yost, who keeps a database of shared service agreements on his office website. "It's very difficult to get that done."

The latest merger talks involve Cleveland and its impoverished neighbor, East Cleveland. And four suburbs in eastern Cuyahoga County - Moreland Hills, Orange Village, Pepper Pike and Woodmere - opted not to merge last year after studying the idea for a few years.

The difficulty, Yost said last month, lies in trying to unravel what he calls "the knot of regionalization." It's a much harder task, he said, than teaming up to repair a couple broken sewer lines.

Woodmere Mayor Charles Smith agrees. "[Merging] is going to be a tough political thing to overcome ... because a lot of communities are different."

Smith said he thinks residents are still getting comfortable with consolidated services. Merging would be an entirely new controversy, he said.

"Is it better to have an efficient government or your own police? That question needs to be asked," Smith said.

Some obstacles seem minor, but could go a long way toward affecting everyday life. Residents in Smith's village, for example, have their trash picked up twice each week. Folks in neighboringOrange and Moreland Hills opt for weekly pickup.

Orange Village Councilman Herb Braverman said it's simple: Many residents don't like change, even when it involves something as routine as hauling away trash.

"They value their independence," Braverman said. "When you start talking to people about sharing their vote with a larger number of people, therefore making it harder to get their way, they're not sanguine about it."

But Daila Shimek, a project manager at Cleveland State University's Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, said that sharing services goes a long way toward breaking down cultural differences.

With that cooperation, Shimek said, it's reasonable to view shared service agreements as a platform for mergers.

During research for a 2011 case study of shared dispatch centers in Ohio, Shimek said, dispatch workers from cities and villages told her they thought they "laid the groundwork" for mergers because they "already developed a level of trust."

Still, she warned "with the city consolidations, those are much more complicated" than sharing services.

"Something that is absolutely critical is that everyone who is in the room has to have something to give," Shimek said. "Everybody has to be coming to the table with [the question:] 'What can I live with?'"

And, Yost said, some cities could stand to lose a lot.

"That represents an actual cost of merger to one city who has done its job: to pay off the debts of the other," Yost said, referencing the longstanding notion by many that Cleveland should annex its struggling neighbor, East Cleveland.

But a potential merger of the two cities faces much more than a financial debate, or so says former longtime Cleveland City Council President George Forbes. Forbes has rallied support for the merger since last year.

Forbes said the discussion is nothing new: A number of cultural factors have stalled plans for decades.

Elected officials, Forbes said, also don't want to lose their jobs should cities merge.

"You have people who use this seat of government for their personal aggrandizement," Forbes said. "It's not corruption...[but] they go from board to board, and the issue becomes not what's best for the city of East Cleveland but what do I get out of the deal?"

But Forbes said he's optimistic, because the merger has become a matter of financial necessity, he said.

"The financial situation is worse," Forbes said. "The auditor said in no uncertain terms that [East Cleveland] cannot last ... [because] there is no money ... and there's no way to make it up."

Sam Howard is a fellow in Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism Statehouse News Bureau. Follow him on Twitter @SamuelHHoward.